Caterham boss Tony Fernandes has said that his team’s failure over the last four years, particularly 2013 where the team finished last out of 11 teams, has made his team stronger.

Announcing his driver line up of Kamui Kobayashi and Marcus Ericsson at a launch event in the team’s Leafield HQ this morning, Fernandes said,

“It’s a critical season. Most people have written us off. From failure you draw some strength.

“Frankly we have to try to do something different. We haven’t performed as a team since I started this team and we have taken something of a radical approach.

“It is crucial this year that we fight for points, for my motivation. It’s no fun going around the world and coming last; nor for anyone in this team.

“We’ve done extremely well on the business side, Caterham cars and so on. We don’t have to be world champions to sell cars, but we want to do better.

“F1 is a damn difficult sport: I underestimated it. We made some mistakes, we tried to jump too fast and if we’d been more conservative we’d have been fighting in the midfield.”

Speaking of the opportunity offered by the radical rule changes on the technical side, Fernandes said, “It’s an advantage for us at the beginning, then after that obviously the teams with more finance will do more.’

On the drivers, Fernandes said that his team has taken decisions with a commercial side to them, taking note of the nationality of the drivers and their marketability, but he had turned down pay drivers with big budgets in a shift of emphasis for the team.

“We could have got two big pay drivers but we have moved away from that,” he said. “Kamui is a great driver and its good to have an Asian driver in F1.

“We have taken a “total F1″ view.”

While Ericsson does bring a budget, which has clearly led to his opportunity, the inclusion of the highly rated Robin Frijns is exciting for the team and Fernandes said that there was a lot of discussion on whether to throw him in as a race driver,

“Robin is the most exciting young driver and we hope that we have a long relationship,” he said. “There was a lot of debate about bringing him in straight away, like a McLaren has done (with Kevin Magnussen) but we erred on the side of caution.”

Caterham has made a significant investment in his HQ and resources and announced today that it will soon begin testing in the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, which will allow them to work at 60% scale; something the leading teams have been doing for a few years. McLaren and Ferrari used the Toyota tunnel last year due to problems with their own 60% scale tunnels.

This will allow Caterham to work in finer detail on aerodynamics and given that the power unit from Renault is the same as the one used by leading teams like Red Bull and Lotus and will thus be what it is, the team hopes its greater aerodynamic capability will allow it to hoist itself up the grid.

It is a more expensive thing to do, but the tyre models are more representative. You get closer to reality with 60% than with 50%.

Technical director Mark Smith said that Toyota is a “world class facility” and with the cut of wind tunnel hours in the Sporting Regulations to 30 hours per week, this made the decision make sense for Caterham.

'if we’d been more conservative we’d have been fighting in the midfield.”

talk about confused. i think the team has been a big disappointment. too much chopping and changing of drivers - all of whom have probably done a pretty good job considering what they've had to work with.

i don't think a f1 team can operate successfully as the mere appendage of a budget airline.

There's less loyalty in F1 than ever now. Teams like Caterham think too much in the short term. These drivers will probably be replaced next season. Van der Garde should have kept his race seat - what did he do wrong??

None of their drivers showed much promise last year. Pic, VDG and Kovy were all disappointing. Kovy, more for his comments regarding pay drivers than his actual driving (which wasn;t too bad in Austin).

Ericsson is an unknown quantity, so better give him the chance to prove his worth than keep an average VDG just for the sake of it. Not all FR3.5 champions are equal after all.

Kovalainen wanted to race and be paid on his driving skills alone, in all honesty with the cars Caterham have been putting together, there are other drivers who have done a similar job to Heikki and they bring finances with them. At the same time he refused to look for any sponsorship as if it's a dirty thing.

Heikki is a nice chap, but I think it was right for Tony to look at other drivers and I'm happy he chose Kobayashi, who isn't bringing that much money, but is much more eager to do whats needed to stay in F1 unlike Heikki.

It is also the least impressive part of 'Caterham' - the road cars are pretty special, with a strong brand. I wonder if there has ever been a car company where it's least exciting cars are it's racing cars?!

Kobayashi, didn't see that coming. Ericson has always been quite quick but never really stepped up to title contender in lower formula's and I'm glad they're taking on Frijns, he's a propper talent and was in real danger of falling through the cracks.

Does Caterham have a budget fully covered by prize money and sponsors, or does it rely on Fernandez plugging the gap as a sponsorship from the car company, air asia etc?

If F1 turns into an engine formula this year and the Renault is ahead of the Ferrari, they could easily pick off Sauber, and if on the odd day they out qualify a Ferrari it would be worth its weight in gold in terms of marketing publicity for the car company in asia, unlikely though it would be to happen.

Really hope that they manage some points this year. They should be helped by the reset of regulations, not expecting to see a Brawn style surge but just a decent showing. I think it is forgotten the difference in budgets for the lower teams. The new powertrains should hopefully bring back some of the enjoyable element of unreliability, at least for the early races. People complain about so many aspects of the changes made to F1 over the last decade or two, but for me the fact cars are now relatively guaranteed to finish bar an accident is the biggest difference.

Looks like Caterham have dropped the yellow from their corporate image and race team colours too.

It is interesting though that Kobayashi has managed to get a seat, it does seem to be a change of policy compared to last year when Heikki was shown the door due to lack of funding. I know Kamui had raised some budget to try and help get him a seat in 2013, I wonder if any of that has survived?

I must admit I have taken a bit of disliking to Caterham since they joined F1. It was very clear to me they went about their business the wrong way and made far too many public predictions about the pace of their newest care that it made me chuckle to see them finish behind Marussia last season despite being on a much bigger budget.

However, I like this line up a lot. It is wonderful to see Koby back on the grid and I currently live in Sweden so it will be interesting to see how Eriksson gets on. Sure he brings a lot of money but if that means Koby gets a seat AND Frijns finds a seat in F1 without a budget then it can only be a good thing for the team and the sport in general. I firmly believe he is the best driver outside F1 and I am delighted to see him getting a role in F1.

I wonder what it is that has been so radical. The car seemed to be rather conventional, the team didn't try to only rely on CFD, they haven't had their car built externally by some company like Dallara, they started with experienced drivers to get proper feedback. That all looks pretty conservative to me.

The time is right for Caterham. They have gone through big changes in the previous 4 years; personnel, drivers and last season possibly the biggest change with their team base. Kobayashi brings a good amount of experience to help point the engineers in the right direction plus a good benchmark for the new boys. All looks positive right now to me.

Great news that Kamui is back. A great fighter 🙂 I feel strangely sorry for the increasing number of pay drivers as they seem to have very fleeting careers in F1. Only the slowest teams take pay drivers so their chances of making a mark and an enduring career is very remote.

It's really time for Caterham to take a real step forward. They've had enough time to learn the ropes. Now, I want to see them start fighting for points. Hopefully, the technical changes this year provide them a way to move into the mid-field.

In fact, Tony is hinting that Caterham may not turn up in 2015. Also he raises a valid question there asking F1 to ponder over the costs that make it prohibitive to be in F1 for smaller teams. These smaller teams are important breeding/training grounds for future F1 stars and without them the supply line of F1 stars will be lost. It is absolutely important for these teams to be in F1.

Hmm I wonder why they have failed so far? Mike Gascoigne that's why. The guy has dragged every team down & completed every contract on either gardening leave or been sacked - Tyrrell, Jordan, Benetton, Renault, Toyota, Caterham - a litany of both big & small budget teams that went downhill or stayed still until he left. A prime example of being over rated.

Shame Tony did not grab his chance to put Frijns next to Kobayashi. Frijns is the best young driver out there, even more successfull then Vettel before he entered F1.

In the end the money from Sweden made Caterham deside to play save and go for the money. Still then I think van der Garde would have been a better choice.

When Tony would have taken the risk to put Frijns in the raceseat, Frijns would have payed back with good results, and could be sold to a big team for a great amount of money. I (and many others) believe Frijns is a next generation Vettel.

I'm certainly no expert, but Ferrari were reporting "correlation" problems. They develop in CFD and verify in the wind tunnel and expect X number of points of downforce, but when they get to the track they would only get X-. They couldn't figure out how to get the results from the wind tunnel to correlate to the real world, at least not with the precision required to reach the top step of the F1 podium. One would think that with the respective road car programs they could sort out their wind tunnel issues outside the limits of F1 "fan on" time restrictions. I imagine this is like many F1 issues, when you are talking about 10ths or 100ths of a second differences the solutions become infinitely more difficult to find.

James - a number of teams have taken big steps forward through technical partnerships with larger teams. Force India / McLaren being a good example. Did Tony suggest why they haven't adopted this approach?

Nice to see Mr. Excitement Kamui Kobayashi back in the saddle - this is a real bonus for the Asian component since Japan for example drives such a massive segment of the automotive market. The frustration of the Caterham boss rings loud and clear in the complete absence of a budget cap, with McLaren today reporting the biggest budget of their tenure in F1 thus far - however that did not get them onto the podium even once in 2013. Formula 1 needs more than a valve job - it needs a complete overhaul -. So far we've had to endure the spectre of an FIA chief official playing with girls dressed like Nazis, we now have the F1 CEO indicted on charges in Germany, we have had to endure the spectacle of 'Crashgate', we're looking at DRS, electric rocket boosters, engine downsizing, gazillions in engineering research and development hamstrung by the tire whims of any given day, we've got 17 year olds almost buying rides, only placed at the back of the queue of pay drivers for the short term, we've got a sport where a really legitimate unassisted passing maneuver makes international headlines, the spoils of war are not divided equally amongst all the players so that the playing field can be duly levelled, and we've got the FIA making up rules as they go along so if Caterham can't quite make it on points well, we'll double the points for a race in lieu of sharing the cash for mechanical upgrades. Yes folks, F1 is a mess and sadly the entertainment value now lies in the soap opera aspects of what was once a real racing sport.

I cannot understand why these guys don't employ Damon Hill in the development of thier cars. I know some of you will be bewildered by this suggestion, but he has a talent for it.

The Williams, the Arrows and the Jordan all benefited from his input and in this day of simulators who knows. But anyone who could set up the equivalent of a Caterham to dominate a race to within a few laps to the finish...... If I was in charge of one of those back of the grid teams it's sSome thing I'd look into.

Good on Fernandes for doing what any of these teams should have done last year... sign Kobayahsi! For hell sakes he is only the most exciting driver to come along in many many years... sometimes you are sure F1 is trying to shoot itself in the foot... for the good of the sport this guy should be on the damn track! Great news!

I am so excited that Kamui is back! This is the best news to come out of F1 in a while. I am equally pleased to see a team choosing talent over sponsor dollars. F1 simply cannot be the pinnacle of motorsport if it is pay-to-race. Now someone needs to open a seat up for DiResta.

Well it sounds like TF has had just about enough. I've often wondered of the resolve it must take for Caterham to continue fielding a team. Surely the years of racing at the back of the grid and without scoring even a single point will resonate through the team and up the ladder to ownership.

I applaud Caterham loudly and wish them their finest success this year.